Feds get serious about chemicals

Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson, while here in our fair city, called for stricter scrutiny of chemicals in the marketplace. The United States lags significantly behind other developed countries in this regard, but what does Jackson’s announcement really mean? I called NRDC staff scientist Sarah Janssen for more information.

What is the status quo when it comes to the EPA’s regulation of chemicals?

There are over 80,000 chemicals that have been put into commerce over the last 60 years, some are pesticides or pharmaceuticals, which are regulated by very specific laws, but the vast majority—over 60,000—fall under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which was enacted in 1976. That law is really weak and doesn’t require much information about a chemical’s toxicity before it’s put into commerce. It’s meant to be a stopgap law, but it basically means that there’s no regulation at all because the bar for the EPA to ban chemicals is so high. As one example, the EPA hasn’t been able to ban asbestos, which is something that we can all agree is dangerous.

What’s wrong with the status quo?

What it has meant is that as technology has advanced and as our knowledge of chemicals’ toxicity has grown, based largely on studies by private scientists, the law hasn’t kept up. We as the American public are highly contaminated with well over 250 chemicals. Some of these chemicals we don’t know anything at all about, but with some, such as phthalates, BPA, and flame-retardants, we have enough information to know we should be concerned.

It’s the CDC’s biomonitoring program that has detected over 250 chemicals in people’s bodies, primarily in blood and urine. California is also going to start biomonitoring program which will work in parallel with the federal program. That program’s just getting started, and it’s really good news.

What led to the EPA deciding to regulate more aggressively?

From the remarks that have been made, the EPA recognizes that the public is rightfully anxious and confused about how chemicals are regulated, how we’re being protected or not protected.

There’s been a groundswell of state action—California passed the Green Chemistry Initiative and Maine also has its own toxic chemicals datatbase—so I think the EPA also recognizes that unless they do something federally, there’s going to be a patchwork of legislation that will make it even more confusing for consumers.

Plus we have an administration that’s more willing to take on issues like this that are more protective of the environment but place a greater burden on industry.

What will the new vetting process for chemicals look like?

There were two parts of announcement that EPA made—one was, for BPA, phthalates and flame-retardants—the EPA is going to announce an action plan, and that process will be open for public comment. We don’t really know what that means yet.

The other part is that the EPA and Obama administration have made it a priority to enact new legislation that would update the outdated Toxic Substances Control Act. All existing chemicals—those already in production—and new chemicals would have to undergo a rigorous review of toxicity that would require the manufacturers to pay for and supply the information. Under the current law, the EPA can’t require that information unless they have a very high level of suspicion. Also under the current law, the EPA has to choose the least burdensome requirement—so if they can use labeling, they have to use that before they can ban a substance.

The other part of the problem with the current system is that the manufacturers claim that the [toxicity] information they supply to EPA is confidential business information, and therefore the public doesn’t have access to it. The new EPA administrator has indicated that she’d like to lift some of those protections.

What will these changes mean for the average American? Are certain products likely to disappear?

Because the legislation hasn’t been introduced yet, it remains to be seen how it’s going to play out. But people will have more informantion about the chemicals that they’re exposed to on a daily basis and they’ll be able to make more informed decisions.

It’s not that products will go away—just particular ingredients. For example, if BPA were one of the chemicals the EPA targeted, baby bottles wouldn’t go away, just the ones that have BPA in them would go away, and parents won’t have to worry as they do now that the replacement chemical would also be dangerous. In the system we have now, some of the flame-retardants that were used to replace PBDE‘s are now showing up in people’s bodies, like the PBDE’s did, so we’ve replaced one chemical with another we don’t know much about.

Also, as some chemicals are phased out, manufacturers will have to propose less toxic alternatives—and they’ll have more incentive to do that because the law will have more teeth.